by Lyndsay Malchuk
Today we’re talking about a metal that most investors haven’t paid attention to, but they should. Antimony isn’t just critical, it’s on every government’s radar, especially as tensions rise and China tightens its grip on supply. Antimony Resources Corp. is aiming to fill that gap with its Bald Hill Project, a high grade Canadian antimony discovery that could change the game. The drills turning visuals are in and results are just weeks away. Joining me now is James Atkinson, the CEO behind this breakout story
The following is a transcription of the above video, and The Market Online has edited it for clarity.
Lyndsay: Let’s cut to it. Bald Hill isn’t just another exploration play now it’s sitting on high grade antimony in a market that’s become a geopolitical chess board. So what’s your take on just how critical this asset could become in the next 12 months?
James: Well, as you mentioned sort of briefly at the beginning, antimony is not a well-known metal, although it is a critical metal. It has many uses. It’s used in all kinds of different applications. The military’s particularly interested because it’s used in their processes. It’s used for instance, in their artillery, in their bullets and all that. But also, it’s important because antimony trioxide is a flame retardant, and so it’s used in military let’s say tents and equipment and clothing as a flame retardant. So it’s used in that aspect. It’s also used for instance in the manufacturer of something as simple as car batteries because it’s added to lead to give lead strength. So sort of expanding on that antimony is kind of an alloy metal and it’s used whenever specific qualities are required, including hardness or heat resistance, that kind of stuff.
Very important. There is no primary production in North America. As we know, most of the production in the past has come from China and the Chinese have cut off their exports of antimony, and so there really is no primary source of antimony in all of North America. And I think that’s what makes our project kind of kind of exciting and interesting. It is situated in North America. It’s actually in New Brunswick in Canada and it’s at the point where we’re starting to get some good antimony results and it’s beginning to give us an idea of what we might have there.
Lyndsay: You have actually confirmed a massive antimony bearing intercept and visuals already before assays have even dropped. So how confident are you that bald Hill could punch through as North America’s first serious answer to China’s stranglehold on supply?
James: Well, I’m not sure what a stranglehold it would be, a relatively small operation, but it would be a high grade operation and would produce high grade antimony concentrate, which could be shipped to different refiners for their use. And yes, we’ve intersected high grade stibnite bearing antimony. The main mineral that we’re looking at in the main mineral for antimony is actually called stibnite. And we have sections in our drill holes of massive solid stibnite. And that means that in those sections we expect to get very high assays. I would just mention that we have intersected these high grade stibnite sections
in about 70% of our drill holes. And so what we’re doing is we’re actually trying to, let’s call it confirm past work that’s been done there. There has been in the past 25 drill holes, we’ll be adding 16 or 17 more.
And that will also give us confidence in the past assays in the sense that if we can duplicate what they found, we can say okay, we can rely on their results for part of our due diligence and also part of our evaluation of the project. We put out a press release on 21st of May, which showed some of these massive stibnite intersections in drill hole 3, 4, 5. Three of our first five drill holes. We have since completed 15 drill holes, and as I said, we’ve intersected stibnite mineralization in 70% of those. That’s 10 or 11 of the 15. And I would just mention as an aside, the first two drill holes we did were very disappointing. And that’s because what happened was because we hadn’t accurately modeled where the mineralization was, those two drill holes were too short and didn’t actually reach the mineralized zone.
We have since drilled two more holes in the same area that are long enough and have intersected the mineral zone. What would normally happen, again, this is going to be an aside, a little bit technical. What would normally happen is when you drill a hole that’s too short and you think it needs to be extended, you just go back to the hole and go down the same hole and extend it. Unfortunately, because of the conditions on the site we couldn’t do that. The holes actually got broken and collapsed, so we had to go back, and drill two additional holes and we did those, and they also intersected massive stibnite. So, it’s pretty exciting stuff. We have found massive stibnite on surface in many places and that’s really what helped us refocus our drilling and say, I think the mineralization’s actually over here when we thought it was over there. So, as I said, we now have much more confidence that when we do our work we will be able to intersect where we think the massive stibnite is.
Lyndsay: Well, James, you’ve been busy over there for sure.
James: We’re up to about 2,600 meters.
Lyndsay: James, I want to flip over just to some government backing now. Now, Perpetua Resources, they got that US government backing for a gold project because they had just a little bit of antimony. Now your project Bald Hill is a pure antimony story. Are you in talks with any government agencies and really what does strategic support actually look like behind the scenes for you?
James: Well, we are in contact, of course with US agencies that supported Perpetua, and I would just correct one thing you said. Perpetua actually has a fairly large resource of antimony. It is mixed up in their gold deposit and will be recovered and processed as they mine the gold. In our case, we’re a pure antimony play, so when we go into mining, we’ll be mining pure antimony. We won’t have to have any special kind of treatment. It’ll be a standard kind of flotation cell, which everybody knows how to run. As far as government support, working in New Brunswick is fantastic. They are the best province in Canada, I would say almost bar none to work in. The government there is very supportive. They’ve covered the whole province with all kinds of regional type surveys, which we have access to.
They also have granted us $50,000 of what they call a junior exploration grant, which we will be applying towards our property. So very supportive place to work as far as exploration goes. Actually, as far as access, we’re about 45 kilometers away from a deep seaport in Saint John, New Brunswick. We’re also 45 kilometers away from the capital city. So, we’re well situated in southern New Brunswick as far as that goes. So we get very good support. I would say we also get good support from the New Brunswick government because of the way they have set up their permitting and their consultation processes. And those are very reasonable and very helpful. Most of our land that we’re exploring on, the surface rights are owned by Irving Woodlands with the Irving company, a big, big company. And they are very used to dealing with mining companies.
They in fact have been in the mining business themselves. So, we signed an agreement with them. Very easy agreement. We can now access their lands to do our exploration. And I’ll tell you a funny story. Normally when you sign an agreement with a landowner, they want you to pay them for the trees that you cut down. Right. Well, Irving’s a little bit different. When you cut down one of their trees, they want you to take it to one of their mills and they will pay you for it, which is a little bit backwards for what I’m used to. But anyway, that’s just a funny story, we don’t have to do a lot of that. Most of the property’s pretty accessible. We don’t have to cut down a lot of trees.
So as far as government support from, let’s call it the US government, which would be what you would be comparing say Perpetua activities to, we have been approached, or we have been talking to those people, and we have got some good contacts there. I would just mention the other thing is that the US Department of Defense recently invested in another project in New Brunswick. It’s a tungsten project. It’s a little more developed than we are. We’re still early stage exploration basically. So, we know that the US Government Department of Defense has their eyes on New Brunswick and I’m pretty sure they know what we have and what our potential is.
Lyndsay: Well, you’re definitely aligning yourself where you need to be, especially now, I mean with China restricting antimony exports, not just once, but twice in the last year. My question to you, James, is how does that reshape your financing strategy, offtake potential or even your M&A runway?
James: Well, it does affect it a little bit, and I’ll explain why, because up until now, most of the processing of antimony concentrate has been in China. So, it does affect us a little bit in the sense that we don’t know, they may take it in, and they may just not let it come out. We don’t know that. I do know some operations in Australia, which produce antimony are shipping their concentrate to China. So I don’t think China has restricted the intake of antimony concentrate. They’ve just restricted the export.
The reason that’s also significant is that there are some processing facilities elsewhere in the world. There is a processing facility in Montana, which belongs to a company which processes antimony. So, there’s a potential partner there. And as far as M&A goes, I guess we have to understand that we are an exploration company. We’re not a mining company. So if it came to the point where we have, let’s say a feasibility study done and we understand what we have, we may be looking at a processing type partner to come in and help us out.
Lyndsay: So visual mineralization is one thing, but the markets want numbers. I mean, your drill results are just about to be released if not released already. So, what are you bracing for and how ready are you to capitalize on a surprise upside?
James: Well, we’re looking for a good upside. The last few days, we’ve had some very good trading. The stock has risen from its levels around 10 cents to around 20 cents. And we expect to get some good eyes, if you want to call it that on our assays. Again, I don’t know if they’re out yet, so I can’t say, but I can tell you that they will be exciting assays.
You can find Antimony Resources Corp. Trading under the symbol C.ATMY on the Canadian Securities Exchange. To learn more about their story, definitely head over and visit them antimonyresources.ca.
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